The only employee still working at Apple after 50 years

On April 1, Apple turned 50 years old and Espinosa became the only employee to witness the company’s development journey over half a century.

After co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak signed the birth certificate for Apple Computer on April 1, 1976, Espinosa became the eighth person to join the small technology company specializing in assembling computers at the “headquarters” in the garage behind Steve Jobs’ house.

“It was a time filled with promise but also with anxiety,” Espinosa told the media. “It’s common for you to have a great idea, start a company, but then fail to find customers, or not be able to manage growth, leading to bankruptcy.”

Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Chris Espinosa and other early employees all attended Homestead High School in Cupertino, California. They met while tinkering and chatting at the Homebrew Computer Club, a group founded in Menlo Park, California.

Espinosa received 2,000 shares when Apple launched its initial public offering (IPO) in 1980, currently worth about $114 million. Since being in charge of programming Apple’s early computers, Espinosa’s job changed many times over the course of 50 years, but he never left Apple.

He is currently 64 years old, works in the Apple TV operating system development team and has the most seniority at Apple, more than any member of the board of directors. This is considered rare in Silicon Valley, where companies start and close quickly and engineers change jobs every few years.

Recruited by Steve Jobs at the age of 14

In 1976, Espinosa, who was a high school student, met his “senior” Steve Jobs at Byte Shop, a computer store located in Mountain View. Jobs invited Espinosa to write programs for the Apple II, which would become one of the first popular personal computers, using BASIC – a now obsolete programming language.

The years 1978-1981 were Espinosa’s only hiatus from Apple because he attended the University of California, but still worked part-time, such as writing a user manual of more than 200 pages for the Apple II. By 1981, Jobs convinced Espinosa to drop out of school to devote himself fully to Apple.

In 1985, Jobs left Apple after conflicts with the board of directors and then-CEO John Sculley. Over the next decade, the company fell into disorientation and financial decline.

“A lot of Apple’s cross-cutting values ​​are still there, the desire to do great things, driven by values,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, who joined the company in 1986 and has the longest tenure on the leadership team. “But we also got off track many times.”

Every time that happens, Apple conducts layoffs “over and over again,” according to Espinosa. However, he was still retained because the human resources manager said he had worked for the company for so long that the severance package was too expensive. “I wondered what I would do because I didn’t have a university degree and only worked for one company,” he said. “But I’ve been here since the beginning, so I’ll stay until I retire.”

Espinosa called the 1997 event a “turning point” for Apple. Steve Jobs returned, leading to the birth of the iPod and iPhone a few years later that shaped today’s consumer electronics industry. “In the 1970s, the idea of ​​owning a computer in your home, or one that you carried with you or on your wrist, was unimaginable, perhaps even scary and weird,” he said.

In half a century, Apple started out, overcame a period of decline and rose again to become one of the most valuable companies in the world. Steve Jobs, who passed away in 2011, became the subject of at least two films, one of which was nominated for an Oscar.

Apple is currently valued at nearly 4,000 billion USD, generates more than 100 billion USD in profits each year and has 2.5 billion phones, tablets, computers, headphones and smart watches in use around the world. They are once again facing new challenges such as revenue dependence on the iPhone, AI fever, slowing growth, fluctuations in tariffs and supply chains, and antitrust.

“Part of the tech world is just looking for the next bubble and getting out quickly before it bursts, but that’s not what we do at Apple,” Espinosa said.